2020 i5 - 70°C idle temperature?

[johannnn]

I was looking at this video, and at 3m10s it shows that the compute idles at 70°C.
It's the i5, so presumably the i3 is cooler.
But is this really true? Do you know of any other review that look at the temperature? Or if anyone here already got the computer, can you verify?

I'm just to idling at ~35°C. If this computer idles at 70°C, I don't even think it's comfortable to use as a laptop since the bottom would be quite warm?

 

[intelligence]

Hmm, this is a let down for me. The CPU performance had my interest peaked. I'm on a Macbook Pro 15" from 2014, and the performance of the i5 seems to be similar in both single and multi core.

My MBP does however run sort of hot, 70c is not uncommon, but most likely ~50c when surfing and not watching Youtube for example. Think I'll sit this one out and wait for 13"/14" MBP with, hopefully, improved thermals.

 

[johannnn]

Hmm, this is a let down for me. The CPU performance had my interest peaked. I'm on a Macbook Pro 15" from 2014, and the performance of the i5 seems to be similar in both single and multi core.

My MBP does however run sort of hot, 70c is not uncommon, but most likely ~50c when surfing and not watching Youtube for example. Think I'll sit this one out and wait for 13"/14" MBP with, hopefully, improved thermals.

50°C when surfing is ok. That’s very different from idling at 70°C! Hopefully the computer in the video was just done with some benchmark and hadn’t cooled down yet.

But I think not all is lost. The computer he tests if I recall correctly is the mid tier which both has a much more powerful CPU, but also a more powerful GPU. So if you don’t need all that (which I don’t), the bottom tier i3 computer should be much cooler hopefully.

 

[intelligence]

Anyone else seeing 70c temps while idle on their new i5 Air?

 

[Zahni]

Maximum allowed temp at die (<> surface) is 100c

Intel® Core™ i5-1030NG7 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) Product Specifications

Intel® Core™ i5-1030NG7 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

 

[johannnn]

Maximum allowed temp at die (<> surface) is 100c

Intel® Core™ i5-1030NG7 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) Product Specifications

Intel® Core™ i5-1030NG7 Processor (6M Cache, up to 3.50 GHz) quick reference guide including specifications, features, pricing, compatibility, design documentation, ordering codes, spec codes and more.

ark.intel.com

Yeah that has been the case since the dawn of time. But that doesn’t make it a comfortable temperature. You know 100°C can boil eggs right? I had the first MBA (2008 version) and the surface could definitely boil eggs.

 

[ghanwani]

I was really hoping they would do something to address the cooling shortcomings in the 2020 MBA, but looks like they didn't. Would definitely be interested in knowing if the i3 is cooler. Otherwise I will hang on to my 2019 for a bit. Temperature was one of the reasons I chose to return the MBPs and go with an MBA.

The 2019 runs cool when watching videos even with the charging cable plugged in. When running on battery it runs still cooler.

 

[Sisti00]

i think macbook air 2020 doesn't have a heatpipe (like mba 2019); only a big heatsink not connected with the fan. So the fan isn't cpu fan, but a case fan.
in a nearly-fanless device with i5 that temp is normal

 

[JTToft]

I was really hoping they would do something to address the cooling shortcomings in the 2020 MBA, but looks like they didn't. Would definitely be interested in knowing if the i3 is cooler. Otherwise I will hang on to my 2019 for a bit. Temperature was one of the reasons I chose to return the MBPs and go with an MBA.

The 2019 runs cool when watching videos even with the charging cable plugged in. When running on battery it runs still cooler.

- If the 2019 already runs cool, why where you hoping they would change the cooling situation?

 

[fokmik]

i think macbook air 2020 doesn't have a heatpipe (like mba 2019); only a big heatsink not connected with the fan. So the fan isn't cpu fan, but a case fan.
in a nearly-fanless device with i5 that temp is normal

2019 doesn't had it either...and a 12" macbook, so fanless device at idle..had arounc 51-52C
So no....if this is true is an issue, a big one...because you cant get lower than 70C only up

 

[ghanwani]

- If the 2019 already runs cool, why where you hoping they would change the cooling situation?

Because it loses performance due to throttling.

 

[Saturn007]

“That’s very different from idling at 70°C!”

Let's see. If my old Centigrade to Fahrenheit conversion formula works 9/5 * C + 32

Then, that works out to 158 degrees F !

That would be utterly unacceptable — depending on heat dissipation, it would burn people's legs! And do so just while idling!

Does the fan come on a lot, too?!

I may abandon my plans of getting a 2020 MBA if it's going to be hot to the touch and the fan will be running a lot. I'm used to the 2013-2015 MBAs where the fan practically never runs and the laptop can rest comfortably on bare legs!

 

[ctjack]

As a pro users of this forum, you are losing one main point. Every new Macbook secretly struggles behind the scene for the first 3-7 days. This depends on how much data it should recover from your iCloud and other places. Why secretly? Because it barely affects your daily usage.
Problem in the video - Max signed on into his iCloud on a NEW MBP Air, and it was downloading and encorporating his video/photos from icloud and also keychain. That is why it is running at 70 Degrees, but it is not idling - it is working actually.
Second hint is that his benchmarks got lower score on this first video, while in the second video it scored much higher. This also suggests us, that first benchmark he got has lower scores because new Air was already doing some kind of background tasks.

 

[kreasonos]

As a pro users of this forum, you are losing one main point. Every new Macbook secretly struggles behind the scene for the first 3-7 days. This depends on how much data it should recover from your iCloud and other places. Why secretly? Because it barely affects your daily usage.
Problem in the video - Max signed on into his iCloud on a NEW MBP Air, and it was downloading and encorporating his video/photos from icloud and also keychain. That is why it is running at 70 Degrees, but it is not idling - it is working actually.
Second hint is that his benchmarks got lower score on this first video, while in the second video it scored much higher. This also suggests us, that first benchmark he got has lower scores because new Air was already doing some kind of background tasks.

I'm glad you pointed this out, Austin Evans released a video today on youtube also dispelling some rumored issues with temps on the new MBA. A lot of people don't know any better though. Max really needs to have better information before making reviews.

 

[intelligence]

Always bad to draw conclusions from a single data point, but what kinds of temps are people seeing after the first couple of days when indexing etc is done? Eager to know.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

As a pro users of this forum, you are losing one main point. Every new Macbook secretly struggles behind the scene for the first 3-7 days. This depends on how much data it should recover from your iCloud and other places. Why secretly? Because it barely affects your daily usage.
Problem in the video - Max signed on into his iCloud on a NEW MBP Air, and it was downloading and encorporating his video/photos from icloud and also keychain. That is why it is running at 70 Degrees, but it is not idling - it is working actually.
Second hint is that his benchmarks got lower score on this first video, while in the second video it scored much higher. This also suggests us, that first benchmark he got has lower scores because new Air was already doing some kind of background tasks.

Correct. The vlogger's methodology is critically flawed.

The system is doing the typical things it does when it is first booted and after major OS upgrades.

If he bothered to look at Activity Monitor, it would have showed processes like 'mdworker', 'lsd' and others churning away. These processes are related to system housekeeping activities like Spotlight indexing, certificate management, etc.

This is the same mistake made by a lot of people who ask "Why is my brand new Mac____ so slow?"

After all of these tasks are complete, I'm willing to bet that the idle CPU temperature is about 40°C.

Don't trust dilettante vloggers for accurate product reviews.

 

[mick2]

Correct. The vlogger's methodology is critically flawed.

Agreed.

In his video he seemed to comment that the CPU was idling at 70degC immediately after running the CPU benchmark stress test. It wasn't clear whether he actually allowed any time to elapse between him running the CPU stress test and then noticing that the CPU was running at 70degC 'idling'.

He also ran all the tests with the Air running on battery, not plugged in. There's already a raft of 'MB Air idles at 70degC' posts across the internet - because of this one video - despite his questionable methodology.

 

[Erehy Dobon]

It's worth pointing out that Catalina has even more background processes than previous macOS versions.

'mediaanalysisd', 'mediacontentd', 'photoanalysisd' and more

I don't boot my external Catalina disk very frequently. I only used it today to apply the latest update and there were a slew of background processes that I don't see on Mojave.

Anyhow, that guy isn't very bright. That probably doesn't stop in from gaining YouTube followers...

Spouting nonsense for pageviews/ad impressions is a time honored Internet tradition.

 

[bosozoku]

My current Early2015 13inch MBP with i5 2,7Ghz idles at 40 degrees celsius, with fan shut off (0rpm)...
And I presume that Haswell i5 is much more hot and not as efficient as ice lake.
70 degrees is too much for idling!

 

[ctjack]

Anyhow, that guy isn't very bright. That probably doesn't stop in from gaining YouTube followers...

Spouting nonsense for pageviews/ad impressions is a time honored Internet tradition.

As every info in this world, everything needs a bit of skepticism applied before soaking up new knowledge. Fact checking is also good tool which is borrowed from journalists.
As for Max, he is good at showing all of the aspects of video editing. Almost nobody tells on youtube how smooth is scrolling, playing video after applied LUTs and rendering time differences on a glance in FCPX and DaVinci. He is good from one side and bad at another - technical side.
But it is always interesting to see his easy to read charts in the video about benchmarks, editing of different videos up to 8k raw, hands-on comparison of different systems side by side.
Thanks to him, I know that OLED display of Lenovo X1 Carbon is 2 times better than MBP 16 for color and brightness. Also Dell XPS 15 has better display because of OLED than MBP15.

He also ran all the tests with the Air running on battery, not plugged in.

This part is worst about his videos. Because he always shows that Windows laptops are very bad when working on a battery. Actually he maybe doesn't know that Windows has an option "high performance", which enables all of the power even without plugged in charger. Or maybe he knows and falsifies the data intentionally.
He always tell you that Macs don't change agility on battery, but windows also can do that. You just have to press 2 buttons. Because when you plug off pc laptop, it changes power mode to "power saving" automatically.

 

[Ybersetzer]

New and, in my opinion, reliable data point: Lisa Gade, Tech review. She's seeing no heat issues whatsoever in daily use:

idling, unplugged: about 35 degrees Celsius
idling, plugged in: about 40 degrees Celsius
webbrowsing, documents: about 50 degrees Celsius
Final Cut: "going up to the 70ies, 80ies, might even push 90, but that's to be expected, that's going to happen even with a more powerful laptop like the 16 inch, so I am not seeing any problems honestly with thermals ..."

I guess Lisa Gade had the good sense to wait until the machine was done indexing etc. ....

check the video from @04:25:

 

[kreasonos]

New and, in my opinion, reliable data point: Lisa Gade, Tech review. She's seeing no heat issues whatsoever in daily use:

idling, unplugged: about 35 degrees Celsius
idling, plugged in: about 40 degrees Celsius
webbrowsing, documents: about 50 degrees Celsius
Final Cut: "going up to the 70ies, 80ies, might even push 90, but that's to be expected, that's going to happen even with a more powerful laptop like the 16 inch, so I am not seeing any problems honestly with thermals ..."

I guess Lisa Gade had the good sense to wait until the machine was done indexing etc. ....

check the video from @04:25:

She's so awesome, temps seem to be on par with the i3 version, they seem to have the same thermals. The only difference I've seen is that at max load the i3 runs at around 2.2 frequency and the i5 runs around 1.1 frequency, same temps, not sure why that is, can anyone explain?

 

[ctjack]

I've seen is that at max load the i3 runs at around 2.2 frequency and the i5 runs around 1.1 frequency, same temps, not sure why that is, can anyone explain?

Just sum it up. 2 cores running at 2.2 on i3 = 2.2 + 2.2 = 4.4 Ghz.
4 cores in i5 = 1.1 + 1.1 + 1.1 + 1.1 = 4.4 Ghz.
Shell of the thin Air can't hold more than 4.4 Ghz of workload.
Especially with thin custom Ice Lake chips in smaller housing for Apple.

 

[kreasonos]

Just sum it up. 2 cores running at 2.2 on i3 = 2.2 + 2.2 = 4.4 Ghz.
4 cores in i5 = 1.1 + 1.1 + 1.1 + 1.1 = 4.4 Ghz.
Shell of the thin Air can't hold more than 4.4 Ghz of workload.
Especially with thin custom Ice Lake chips in smaller housing for Apple.

How does that translate to performance?

 

[ctjack]

How does that translate to performance?

If software which you use, can utilize 4 cores and above, you will be better of with i5.
If software can not use more than 2 cores or single core software - then there will be no difference.